


10 Ways To Avoid Talking About Your Job

by DetroitBabe



Category: Constantine: The Hellblazer (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-07-29 11:09:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20081221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetroitBabe/pseuds/DetroitBabe
Summary: In which we try not to talk about it.





	10 Ways To Avoid Talking About Your Job

**Author's Note:**

> I just remembered this short-lived series, I liked it, I re-read it, I still liked it, and a few words came together. Now, hear me out: the way vol.1 ends and vol.2 begins, it looks like it’s the same night, right? But later on when they argue, John says they’ve known each other for three months. That could mean two things: either he’s been avoiding Oliver for 3 months after resolving that Veronica affair, or the three months have passed between vol. 1 and 2. It's likely that the writers meant the former, but the latter has more potential, doesn’t it?

**One: just don’t.**

“...Love you, Kelse. Love you too, Livvie, I know you’re listening. I’ll see you girls next weekend. Bye-bye. Yes, next weekend. Bye-bye.”

The sweet, droning voice nearly sends me bolting out of the door. I’ve faced nightmares from the deepest pits of Hell, but the cooing tone of a caring father of two might just be the thing that finally breaks me.

It’s not that I have something against children. Quite the opposite, I like them. I like them not possessed, not flayed or burned alive, and not eviscerated by something with too many sharp bits, which is precisely why I don’t have any myself, and I tend to keep away from other people’s if I can help it. Look, even tough bastards like me have their weak spots, and children’s mine. It’s always nasty, coming across children in my line of work, and it’s always ugly afterwards. With my late mates, I could hang out, joke around, crack open a beer and then tell them to piss off at the end of the evening. You can’t hang out with dead children; they just sit across the room and stare at you with big empty eyes, and I can’t take it. I’ve never met Oliver’s daughters, but I can imagine them well enough. I can imagine lots of things. I don’t wanna go through this shit again. Oliver finally hangs up after yet another round of hugs and kisses, and turns back to me with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry about that. They sometimes call after I’ve clocked out.” Something of my misery must be showing on my face, because Oliver frowns and looks at me like he wants to tell me to get it off my chest but he’s a little afraid of the horrors that may follow.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Sure,” I mumble, because I don’t need no-one’s pity. I can feel I’m getting too goopy for my own taste, courtesy of mister Sweet Voice on the other end of the couch and the I-lost-count-how-many disgusting craft beers sloshing around my system. I should go easy on the juice, it’s rude to drink up the entire contents of your host’s fridge while he’s hardly had any. Or maybe I shouldn’t, maybe he’ll think I’m disgusting and kick me to the curb, and save me the whole dilemma.

“Was just thinking,” I add. Wrong move, John. Now he’s gonna ask,  _ what about? _

“What about?” he asks, after another moment of hesitation.  _ Don’t tell him. _

“Kids,” I tell him, against my better judgement. Again, a pause. “I’ve a niece, back in England,” I explain, so we don’t sit here sweating in silence. “Anyway, she’s all grown up now, so it hardly counts.” I shrug.  _ And one time I saved her life. And then I ruined it. _ Oliver tactfully doesn’t press on, and afterwards he doesn’t ask me about myself for a while, so on the whole I’d say it was a win. Now, I’m not a praying man, but I pray he never asks if I want to meet his family. 

**Two: don’t leave any clues.**

“Is that water?”

“Huh?” I roll over, blink the sleep out of my eyes, and get distracted by the sight of Oliver’s gorgeous body, naked save for the knickers, all the while he’s cautiously sniffing at the contents of my stainless steel hip flask. The one with a cross engraved on it, to avoid confusion, I realize too late to stop him from adventurously taking a sip.

“You keep water in this?” he asks, confused and amused. In a parallel universe, I’m getting told off for my drinking problem. In this universe, I’m a weirdo, gawping like an idiot as a hearty gulp of the supernatural equivalent of mace spray on a keychain goes down to bless the mouth and entrails of my daft boyfriend. I wonder if it will transfer when he blows me, and my dick will become a weapon of God, because he’s making me daft too, by osmosis. Well, maybe he’s the weirdo for getting up at the asscrack of dawn and sniffing at a gentleman’s things, I think, but I don’t make a fuss, because that would make me seem suspicious rather than just mildly eccentric. Let him think whatever the hell he wants. I keep the  _ real _ weird shit someplace else, anyway. I’ve got a storage unit for that, sealed and protected, and he’ll never see it.

**Three: misdirection.**

The greatest asset up a magician’s sleeve. The oldest trick in the book. The  _ only _ trick in the book, because it’s how all the other tricks work: let the audience focus on a detail, turning their attention away from the bigger picture. Don’t let them notice what you’re really doing, but let them tell themselves the story.

So, that’s what I’m doing. Even though that recent business with Veronica made me rather disinclined to any strolls down the memory lane, I dig up one of the old band T-shirts, miraculously still in one piece, -ish. I’ve been milking the bad boy charm for all it’s worth, it always works on people like Oliver - nice and proper and only somewhat inclined to offer drinks on the house to handsome strangers. And after that he’s telling himself the whole story, like I said. Bit of a rowdy past explains at least some of the scars, and maybe even the tattoos, and I’m not saying anything, because I reckon that having gone through some edgy goth phase when I was younger is much less of a dealbreaker than, well, the truth. And with some of the odds and ends left lying around my flat I must come across as one of these New Age witchcraft types, but that’s half the queer folks I know anyway and it’s also really fucking funny to think about, and better than any lie I could come up with.

He believes it, too, I feel. That’s the thing with humans,  _ normal people, _ I mean: always on the lookout for a comfortable illusion to settle into. Makes my job easier; no better way to explain the inexplicable than to put on a reassuring face and say,  _ it’s not what you think _ \- and they’ll be so relieved, they’ll swallow any bullshit you feed them. Hell, they’ll even come up with excuses on their own, you just sit back and watch. I sit back and watch.

**Four: fuck, but he’s persistent.**

“So, you still haven’t told me what is it that you do.”

_ Just say you’re unemployed, Jesus Christ. _

“Oh, nothing, really, at the moment,” I say without skipping a beat. I’m a spectacular liar.

**Five: maybe we’ll talk about your job instead, huh?**

I breeze past the booze alley, only grabbing a six-pack of beer before making a turn for food, real stuff, not the frozen shit I usually live on, but actual fresh ingredients that Oliver is going to make into proper dinner - I’ve always been a lousy cook, so I’m using him shamelessly. Jesus, it’s such a... normal life, the kind I know I’ll be itching to get out of in a while because I’m fucking hopeless, but for now I’m soaking it in and I’m keeping up appearances: not showing up drunk, making sure I’m always wearing my best suit (that’s the one without any blood on it) for a date night, and so on. We even went grocery shopping together, I mean, that’s just disgusting. But when your man is the chef of a fashionable restaurant in New York and anything  _ you _ cook looks and smells like hellspawn meat, you don’t complain. The domestic life has its perks.

**Six: or better yet, let’s take our minds off it altogether.**

Been a while since I shagged someone who’d make me forget my own name, and usually it took an oblivion spell or at least generous use of some controlled substances. But now, Oliver’s cock has a magic all of its own, and while we’re fucking he’s not asking me personal question, so it’s my favourite part of the evening for yet another reason beyond  _ damn, he’s good. _

**Seven: odd jobs. Nothing that could interest you.**

A panicked call, someone responding to one of my online ads. Judging by their tone, the very gates of Hell opened in their basement; based on the few concrete details I’m able to get out of them, I’m judging it’s some minor demonic infestation, but I don’t wanna put it off for later in case it gets nasty, and they might keep calling me until I come anyway. I jump out of bed and I’m already dressed by the time Oliver gets out of the shower; we collide in the hallway, and he frowns in surprise.

“Sorry, love, I gotta go,” I say, grabbing my coat. “It’s - work stuff.”

“So, you found something?” he asks, confused.

“Yeah, we’ll talk later,” I reply, and I know it’s gonna bite me in the ass tomorrow.

I need a cover story, I decide as I’m running down the stairs. It works for Bruce, it works for Clark, why wouldn’t it work for me? Sure, I doubt I could pass for a billionaire, and I don’t even have a fake press card for getting into places like some of my friends - in this day and age, when anyone could Google me and the jig’s up in seconds, I prefer quick hypnosis. No, I need something low-profile. I’m wondering if I’d actually need to get a day job, or would just letting people think I have one be enough.

**Eight: pest control. That’s it.**

Because that’s what most of them really are, I think to myself one of these nights, pests. Nasty little buggers. Vermin. Not the kind of beast that wakes up only for the end times, but can do enough harm, and I can’t stand their kind - stupid, with only enough wit to be malicious, annoying, dirty gremlins.

Disused tunnel of the New York subway, so clich é it makes me sick; or maybe it’s the smell of gasoline that’s so nausea-inducing. I wonder if the bugger can smell it. A sensitive sense of smell doesn’t seem like an evolutionary advantage in Hell, but then again, most demons revel in the stink, they wear the blood and sweat and shit like perfume. But the sweet fragrance of human flesh must be stronger and more alluring, because the little bastard is almost close enough to catch my coattails and doesn’t sound like he’s stopping. I don’t look back. I slip on the last steps, skin my knuckles on the raw concrete wall as I miss the handrail, and bound across the space below even before I stick a proper landing. I don’t stop until I reach the end of the walled-off tunnel, I hit it and turn around in feigned desperation, hoping I seem like an easy and delicious enough prey. A whiff of fear would help, and I don’t entirely have to fake it - I have to let the thing get close and it’s not a prospect I relish.

I wait until it’s standing over me and only then I say the word, trying to edge away so that the whole pile of smoking goo that its body is turning into doesn’t ruin my coat. I leave when it stops screaming. Once I reach the top of the stairs, I light a match and toss it over my shoulder, and I start to run, picking up the pace when I feel a rush of hot air on my back. From a safe distance, I pick up the discarded train of thought. Pest control.

**Nine: we’ve reached a status quo.**

You could say we’re an item now; it’s established. And that’s good, because it means he doesn’t mind me being evasive sometimes and got used to not getting all the answers. Means that what he knows about me is enough for him, that - I guess he loves me for what I am. He -

Eh, fuck. It’s bad, because I’m starting to delude myself, starting to think it might work out. As if my life hasn’t taught me yet, but it seems I’ll never learn. Well, I could always use a new ghost in the house; it feels empty without them.

Christ, no, that’s awful. I don’t want that.

I could always break up like a normal person, but I don’t want that either. So we just gotta make it work somehow, for a little longer. Just gotta be careful.

**Ten: try maintain some distance, even if it hurts.**


End file.
